Furthermore, in the battle to end slavery, examples of refugees who successfully adapted to their new environment were presented to the world as proof that, contrary to Southern propaganda, people of African descent were entirely capable of thriving as independent agents outside of slavery. The presence of these refugees focused international attention on Canada and brought a level of intellectual debate formerly unknown in the pioneer communities. Ultimately, the experience of the Underground Railroad helped to forge Canadians' sense of themselves as a democratic country.

After the arrival of the Loyalists in the 18th century, the immigration of thousands of African Americans via the Underground Railroad constituted the largest and earliest wave of political refugees to have settled in the Canadian provinces. These refugees chose Canada because it was the closest free, largely English-speaking country and because there existed a network of Canadians and Americans who worked with escapees along the way and at reception points on the Canadian side of the border. This network was run by an informal group of people, black and white, who used any means at hand to help fugitives from slavery to escape. By the mid-19th century, their methods had become so successful that the process was described by terminology from the cutting-edge technology of the day, the railroad (the name evolved using American terminology). With

the help of a network of conductors and station-masters, the Underground Railroad brought refugees to various parts of pre-Confederation Canada from Nova Scotia to British Columbia, but by far the largest influx occurred in the Toronto-Windsor-Niagara Falls triangle, where people made use of the Detroit and Niagara rivers to cross over into Canada.

By the 1850s, the racial situation in the United States was becoming increasingly repressive. Not only did the movement to abolish slavery through legal means seem stalled, but free-born African Americans, some from families free for generations, were threatened. To placate the South, which was outraged by the continuous escape of slaves, a new Fugitive Slave Act was passed by the American federal government. This law assumed that people of colour were enslaved unless they could prove otherwise. Fugitive and free alike were threatened with the possibility of being arrested and sent south into slavery. Numbers of free black people joined the Canada-bound stream of self-liberated slaves.The northward migration of thousands of African Americans seeking freedom resulted not only in the establishment of new Canadian settlements, but also in lasting impacts on the fabric of Canadian political, legal, religious and cultural life. The Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada has considered sites, persons and events associated with the Underground Railroad experience in Canada as they relate to a number of major issues, including the Abolition Movement, Settlement, Religious Institutions, Education and the Military.